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Zero 7
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Dead Man's Bones

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 12 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 4 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Anti
Release Date: 06 October 2009
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Rock
Summary
Actors Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields team up to release their debut album as Dead Man's Bones.
Also On The Web: Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
All Music Guide
Dead Man's Bones isn't perfect, but it's often fascinating and nearly always charming--and Shields and Gosling wouldn't have it any other way.
Read Full Review >Alternative Press
Gosling and Shields play all the instruments on the disc and sing along with the kids choir--which sounds like a recipe for disaster but in actuality it's both compelling and surprising well-rendered.
Read Full Review >Prefix Magazine
Dead Man’s Bones evokes all the right images of a haunted October, and with such sensitivity and sincerity, it’s rarely kitschy and never inappropriate.
Read Full Review >Mojo
Dead Man's Bones turns out to be a decidedly beautiful thing. [Nov 2009, p.93]
Q Magazine
Incredibly, it works. [Nov 2009, p.104]
Filter
The project was, in fact, meant to be set to a stage show that never materialized, but the songs do mostly stand quite well in their own...sort of. [Fall 2009, p.94]
Pitchfork
So many ways for it to go wrong, but instead it's a unique, catchy and lovably weird record, with highlights that could hold their own with the best indie singles of the year.
Read Full Review >Under The Radar
Dead Man's Bones is a rickety exemplar of daring amaturism, in step with the duo's ineer-city-music-program pasts. [Fall 2009, p.57]
cokemachineglow
Dead Man’s Bones is about death, right, and about love, testing where one touches the other, flirting with sensations similar and enduring the inability to confront or frankly deal with that intimacy. Had this record a thicker dramatic arc or something less confining than a spreadsheet of rules, then maybe the songs wouldn’t so inevitably miss their obvious marks.
Read Full Review >Spin
Hollywood brooder Ryan Gosling doesn't reverse the rule that actors make dubious pop musicians (see Keanu, Jared Leto, ScarJo), but his rickety collaboration with budding thespian Zach Shields has an undeniable dark charm.
Read Full Review >Urb
Is Dead Man's Bones' record necessarily as accomplished as either of the aforementioned? Maybe not. But when one half of your band is splitting his vocations by also brandishing his face onto big studio pieces of celluloid, it's still a mightily impressive debut.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly
How you respond to this cloying, gothic preciousness will have everything to do with your personal tolerance level for things like rough-hewn songcraft and small children chanting about zombies. [16 Oct 2009, p.59]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
